Friday, August 24, 2007

Copying Multileader Styles in AutoCAD 2008

I love the new Multileader capability in AutoCAD 2008, but while helping a client today, I discovered a somewhat glaring oversight on the part of Autodesk. Judging from postings on the AUGI forum, many other users have already discovered this problem.

The customer asked how he could copy a multileader style from one drawing to another. I naturally assumed that he could use Design Center to accomplish this. Imagine my surprise therefore when I realized that this capability was not added to Design Center in AutoCAD 2008.

After a bit of searching, I found several threads on the AUGI forum that dealt with this. There are two documented work arounds.

METHOD 1: Drawing Insertion method

Open the drawing into which you want to copy the multileader style.

Use the INSERT command to insert the drawing containing the desired multileader style.

When AutoCAD prompts you to select the insertion point, press ESC to cancel the command.

Note that this method will also add all of the text styles, dimension styles, etc. from the drawing being inserted, which may not be desirable. If that is the case, here's another way to copy a multileader style.

METHOD 2: Tool Palette method

Create a multileader in the drawing in which the desired style exists (using the style you want to copy) and then drag-and-drop that multileader onto a tool palette.

Open the new drawing and then start the MLEADER command using the multileader you placed on the tool palette.

Note that this method will initially insert the exact same multileader as you created in the first drawing, including the text. But you can delete that multileader and then just use the MLEADER command normally to create new multileaders. But this method will definitely add the multileader style to the second drawing (and only the multileader style, not all of the other stuff that comes in if you use Method 1).

I would hope that the ability to copy multileader styles from one drawing to another using Design Center is high on the AUGI AutoCAD wish list. It seems silly that Autodesk neglected to add that in AutoCAD 2008. Hopefully, the company will remedy that situation very soon.